HP builds have to be buffed. stop talking about nerf.
nerf will ruin the game
1 Like
Itâs more so that other damage mitigation tools need to be brought up rather than ward needing to be nerfed tbh.
How are people getting such insane ward numbers.
I have ward treshhold and ward affixes on every slot of gear and only have 2k ward lol playing a normal minion necromancer.
Let me just say one thing I absolutely hate about Health builds, theyâre so damn restrictive. To get a decently tanky HP pool 3k/4k you NEED to have hybrid health on every slot that can have it, %health or +health affix on every other slot, they need to be good rolls, health from passives and of course % health idols since vitality was nerfed. AND you need to also cap resists, crit avoid/redn, 60% endurance and your other defenses (dodge/armor).
This is bad for the game IMO since it makes other loot redundant and limits build creativity. No health based build will use boots without hybrid health or it will suffer a massive hp drop. You can loot a really good double exalted with 70% Physical res, 30% movespeed, 8 str/dex/int, 37% crit avoidance on your perfect base, but you will never use such an item on a health based build (unless as a placeholder till you get boots with hybrid health).
On my phys rive Void Knight, Iâm barely at 3K HP with T5 health/hybrid on all slots, I am using 2x Ornate idols with Rive crit multi and armor shred. Only option to push health if I want to get tankier(outside of exalteds or legendaries) is to swap them with %health/+health idols. Pretty much every build uses these to beef up their HP lategame. What about builds that want/need to use actually interesting offensive idols like Smite proc or Frostbite with cold skills or Divine bolt proc or Inc damage at 300 mana. They have to suffer with a reduced lifepool which no-one will do if they want to push further.
But actually though Health is still very competitive with Ward thanks to endurance and leech just more restrictive.
I think health needs a baseline buff with diminishing returns as you reach higher amounts, to make spamming health on all affix slots feel less mandatory and encourage alternative gearing.
Sorry for rant, TLDR: Health builds are annoying to manage lifepool along with other defenses/offense/utility and ward allows much more flexibility in gear and unique affixes.
1 Like
I hate to be that guy, but your example and calculations are wrong.
20% DR does not give you 1,2x eHP. This is not how it works.
If you have 1000 Health and 20% DR you have 1250 eHP
Why and how goes well beyond this topic, but anyway.
That is actually wrong, because ward builds have access to a lot of these defensive layers. (only endurance does not work with Ward). Even better and more access than health builds for the most part even, because they can dedicate all their suffixes to armor and dodge for example while health builds still needs to dedicate health onto their suffixes on gear.
I donât know how you mean this. Generally less health and more DR is better for sustain, because leech and regen usually have a fixed amount.
So less health, that is protected by multiple DR layers is more valuable and more easily recovered.
Dodge is very strong and valuable. It gives a lot of average eHP for little investment. It is insanely strong vs. high frequency low damage hits like when an entire mob pack attacks you at once. But especially with Dodge you want to take extra effort in still having enough eHP to survive big chunky incoming hits, thus Dodge should never be your only and primary form of defensive layer.
Every character has access to the same amount of affixes and passive points. U really cant have all. If u prio a,b and c then u cant have f,g,h. Its all about the net worth of a passive point in correlation to an affix/tier.
All the warlocks with ward to the moon are bugusing at the first place. If bugs are fixed, they never ever have armor, dodge and other layers of dmg reduce, having access to it doesnt mean they really have it they are running out of points/slots.
Last but not least, besides from all stat math. And thank you for pointing the ehp thing out, it changed everything:
Like any ARPG Last Epoch has a fundamental design limitation: Doing damage OR move. Doing both is the really only way to play this genre at all. All dmg over time or minion or warpath and so on is far superior to anything else if u come to a monster level that matters. If the playerbase understood this, designers must completly change mechanics. From what i have seen with POE 2 a lot of dmg skills have a movement component there. This will be evolution.
Its like Vampire Survivor: Move and autocast anything without delay. This is future.
When do you stop buffing? If you buff classes to the broken state of Falconer for example you need to make every class do millions of damage pressing a button every few seconds. And then what? You buff all enmies that millions of dmg only remove 1% of their HP? I donât remember what game went down that path and how well it worked out for them.
But the way you portray it, sounds like a ward build needs to forgo defensive stats, which they do not.
Most of the Ward comes from Passives and Skill interactions with a couple of uniques. (and I am not speaking about bugs or vastly overperforming builds)
The suffix budget is a lot tighter for health builds compared to ward builds.
And Ward builds have very few useful stats on gear that directly affect ward. Main Stat would be Int and a couple of Ward/Sec suffixes but these are very low in comparison to a lot of these passives or skill interactions.
I actually agree with you that Health builds are not bad, but they are definitely in a tough spot from a gear budget perspective.
I agree that health could benefit from a boost like 1.25xall flat health stats in game passives/items/affixes.
Oh my LL ward build would be all for this to get even more ward 
.
Simply the â%ward for missing %hpâ items need to go or be nerfed dramatically, including ukheiros. This fixes ward.
Iâm okay with said items giving X ammount of baseline ward BUT they shouldnât be producing even more ward on top of it. I WISH said LL items would be converted into ward threshold items that are meaningfull without generating a stupid ammount of ward even when it kills low life builds.
I admit I tried it, ward does work really well, but it just feels off to me. I have generally enjoyed the balancing act of a life build with sustain in ARPGs so thatâs what I go with now. Probably wonât push as high, but right now Iâm just getting through the last lvl 90 monos to get them empowered.
I just had 8k ward, and was one shot by a mob in a monolith (not a boss), it did not care about my ward.
When you have 75% armor or high dodge it affects layers of defensive, you donât take as much damage as I do with 10% armor. Endurance is on top of it. Ward needs to be generated and maintained, you take one big hit, or you run out of mana and you cannot maintain it.
Mobs can also out dps ward generation quite easy, and you donât have the armor/dodge/endurance stat to lower mobs dps.
You donât take in account how much ward is generated per second/how much ward decays per second, it builds up a lot, only when you dodge/avoid all the hits. Essentially a 10-12k ward in endgame shields for 1-2 average joe mobs hits, after which you are defenseless. And for a mage I die instantly, when I get into a dungeon if I dont build atleast 5-6k ward.
There is an easy workarround to this specific part of your post and itâs called skill.
Sooner or later they can and they can outdps hp reg, leech and healing all at once at some point.
Right now we are able to create working builds but itâs easier to do so with ward because you need to jump through far less hoops to make a Ward build work.
You just said it, builds/mechanics that require skill to play and dodge most of the mobs attacks/playaround cannot be called broken. So ward for most part is not broken, some passive/uniques and their particular interaction are.
I feel like people here have never seen OP/broken builds, like people standing AFK in POE on ubers, and they donât click any buttons, nothing can kill them.
Dying from 1-2 hits is not Overpowered.
I am not going to comment on endurance as I have not played a vitality character in this season, but reputable sources say Void Knight is completely busted, there is also Paladin with healing, that have high surviveability and can push high corruption.
Personally I agree that ward needs to be nerfed because there is no tradeoff for it BUT what is actually brings up the flaws on the mechanic is not ward itself but the uniques that stack ward and ALSO keep you low life.
Cleaver Solution is an amazingly designed item but in conjunction with all other Ward items (that arenât even hard to get) just make for very strong broken builds.
It would be fine if these items were Mageblood/Headhunter levels of Rarity. It could be the top end chase build items just like we have in PoE.
The difference between a Mageblood or Headhunter build from one without it is absurd BUT thatâs fine because itâs really hard to get those and it becomes the endgame content (like Omnis and Red Ring kinda are, they are busted but nobody complains about them).
But when you have very powerful combination of stackable items that are easy to get and also make for the most broken build you donât get to buildcraft and progress your way to those items.
I also feel like Level requirement is not enough of a limitation for these items and that leads to my point of ward not having any weakness. Ward + Lowlife should be a tradeoff, you get tons of extra health BUT if that is gone you die.
For that to work Ward defense should ignore armor and dodge and other mitigation, then stacking ward would be fine. You could even try to get Ward + Endurance on the very endgame for when you lose ward.
Either that or the âlow health wardâ items should actually just Lower your MAX health, not current. That way you donât get benefits from low health together with it.
Items like Mourning Frost are great because they can give a LOT of power for DEX stacking builds BUT cost your resists. Cleaver Solution + Ward is just "You get insane Ward, ward retention and âhealthâ-pool just from stacking HP and Strength. On yeah, also more EHP from each health-stat than a Health Stacking build.
Itâs just dumb how everything comes together without giving a single weakness to the character.
Building for ward usually costs DPS.
Example: which of the following would give better DPS?
0LP Exsanguinous
OR
Standard chest with +3 or +4 of your main spam skill and t5 of whatever affix maximises your DPS.
Nice idea except that in most cases the amount of ward you can hit is a function of your max HP. And many builds can maximise HP and have large ward pools.
How hard do you actually think it is to get 2 LP Exsanguinous?
How many affix slots do you think you get free from other items after getting 5k+ healthpool from a single chest item?
Well I played 3000 hours and Iâve seen one in total with 2LP.
Even then I need RNG to hit the right affixes. Then I need to repeat for boots. An Exsang on its own is meh.
Arguing that stacking ward doesnât affect DPS is nonsense. Opportunity costs are a thing, even if it ruins the narrative.
1 Like